Abstract:
The Mountain Nyala (Tragelaphus buxtoni) is an endangered and endemic flagship species to
Ethiopian highlands. This study aims to identify and map the distribution of suitable habitats for
the Mountain Nyala in response to species sustainability and ecotourism development in the Bale
Mountain national park. Environmental and anthropogenic factors, such as vegetation cover,
topography (i.e., slope, elevation), soil type, precipitation, temperature, settlement, river, and road
buffer zones were included to develop a Geographic Information System (GIS) based habitat
suitability model for the Mountain Nyala. The statistical method such as pairwise comparison was
applied to rate the individual classes of each factor and weight the impact of one factor against the
other which helped to determine the suitability model. Basically, all factors were converted into
raster and combine by using weight overlays in ArcMap with weights from the analytical hierarchy
process (AHP) which based on the distribution of each class of habitat factors to generate the final
thematic map. The map shows that within all park zones, 4% or ~ 80 ha, 27% or ~ 58767 ha, 51%
~ 109143 ha, 21% ~ 45289 ha, and 6% or ~ 131 ha lie in suitability zone ‘unsuitable’, ‘less
suitable’, ‘marginal suitable’, ‘moderately suitable’, and ‘high suitable’, respectively. Three
environmental variables, vegetation cover, slope, and elevation, were the most important
predictors having the greatest contribution to the habitat suitability model. The result revealed that
habitat fragmentation is a common problem for the survival of the Mountain Nyala species
throughout its ranges of distribution. Thus, future conservation and management action should
address toward solving this problem through designing appropriate corridors that help connect the
fragmented suitable habitat patches for this endangered flagship species in the park.
